English actress, theatre producer, and wartime nurse and health educator. Olga Isabella Nethersole was born Spanish descent on her mother's side. Her step-father was Henry Nethersole, a solicitor. She made her stage début at Theatre Royal, Brighton in 1887. In 1888, Nethersole began playing important parts in London, at first under Rutland Barrington and John Hare at the Garrick Theatre. She toured Australia and the United States playing leading parts in modern plays, notably Clyde Fitch's Sapho, where she and her male costar Hamilton Revelle were arrested for "violating public decency" for which she was later acquitted. Her powerful emotional acting, however, made a great effect in some other plays, such as Carmen, in which she again appeared in America in 1906. In 1904, Nethersole portrayed the lead role in La seconde madame Tanqueray at the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe in Paris. Then she was at the Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt in Magda, Sapho, Adrienne Lecouvreur, and an adaptation of a French play by Eugène Scribe and Ernest Legouvé, Camille, an adaptation of a French play La Dame aux Camélias, and The Spanish Gipsy, an adaptation of the French play Carmen de Mérimée in 1907. Every summer, Nethersole spent a week at the house of playwright Edmond Rostand in Cambo les Bains. In 1907, she performed Rostand's play La Samaritaine an English version of it to play it in London. In a conference at the Théâtre de l'Athénée on 17 November 1908, Robert Eude said that Olga Nethersole invented the soul kiss (an especially long kiss, of which actress Maude Adams was the recordwoman). Nethersole inspired the character of "Miss Nethersoll", an American dancer, in the French novel La Danseuse nue et la Dame a la licorne by Rachel Gaston-Charles (1908). During World War I, Nethersole served as a nurse in London and later established the People's League of Health, for which she received the Royal Red Cross (RRC) in 1920. She combined her theatre work with health work for the rest of her life. She was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1936.

The Society for the Suppression of Vice, led by Anthony Comstock, singled out Broadway as a bastion of subversive and morally corrupt works. One play, Sapho, was singled out for its bawdy depiction of a seductive woman and her many lovers. Based on a French novel, Sapho starred English actress Olga Nethersole as Fanny, the offended seductress. In a scene that offended the sensibilities of some, Fanny is seen being carried up a flight of stairs by a man she was not married to. On top of that, Fanny appears to be eagerly anticipating what might transpire when she and her paramour reach the top of the staircase. New York newspapers, eager to fan the flames of moral indignation and to boost circulation numbers, condemned the play as a "reeking compost of filth and folly." Such publicity only increased the play's popularity. An inspector for the New York Police Department came to the conclusion that the play was not immoral. It had taken him 6 viewings to arrive at that conclusion. During one performance, Olga Nethersole was placed under arrest for "violating public decency." Her trial transfixed the city for weeks. Instructed by the trial judge that they were "not the guardians of the morals of this community," the jury took only 15 minutes to find Nethersole innocent. No sooner had the judge laid down his gavel, than the curtain rose again on Sapho. This time, the crowds were even bigger. 

Theatrical critics at the turn of the 20th century speculated whether the passionate intensity that Olga Nethersole projected on stage could be attributed to the Spanish ancestry on her mother's side, because no English actress of her generation could approach her ferocious emotionalism in the climactic scenes of the dramas she performed. And yet, for someone so volatile in her projections of other characters, her own personality tended to order and professionalism. Always punctual, given to routines of exercise and diet, and famous for quitting cities whever not engaged in a production, Nethersole was a peculiarly self-conscious mimetic artist. Her intellectualism emerged in her unstinting advocacy of the plays of Ibsen, Shaw, and Gorky, and her willingness to appear in controversial projects. She never married, and no project in her career proved more controversial than her appearance in Clyde Fitch's "Sapho," a work that prompted the New York police to shutter the theater and arrest the performers. While she began performing on English stages at age seventeen, her international reputation was made in 1888 brilliantly performing a supporting role in "The Dean's Daughter" at the St. James Theatre. Her unbuttoned emotionalism made 1892's "Agatha" a revelation to English critics who tended to echo Clement Scott's opinion that "Women seldom let themselves go on the English Stage." Her genius became universally recognized in England in 1894 when she singelhandedly made "The Transgressor," a tediously preachy play on the marriage laws, a gripping experience. Later in 1894 she brought the play to America, using it as the vehicle for her American debut. Augustin Daly's publicity branded her the "English Bernhardt." Her American debut on October 16, 1894, shocked the New York audience with its extravagance, and critical opinion about her ability was undecided until her presentation of "Camille" four nights later, in which her subtly became apparent and her triumph sealed. For a dozen years Nethersole crossed the Atlantic regularly appearing in plays featuring a central woman. After the turn of the century, she became increasingly concerned about health issues, tuberculosis particularly. After her departure from the stage in 1913, she devoted her energies to health issues exclusively. She joined the British Red Cross and founded in 1917 the People's League of Health.